Ever since the first Open World participants arrived in the United States in mid-1999, accountability has been one of the core principles that our exchanges seek to illuminate. Americans take it for granted that the public, private, and nonprofit sectors should be accountable to citizens, consumers, and clients. Yet such an expectation is foreign to so many of our participants because of the political and civic culture they inherited. But without accountability, the rule of law, civil society, and democracy cannot flourish.

Turcanu was hosted in Kalamazoo, MI by Colleagues International from September 21 - 29, 2012.

I have a dream. My American dream, as they say. I want to grow old overseas, somewhere in California. Or, perhaps, further up north, in Michigan, on the shore of one of the Great Lakes, in a quiet locality with a strange name, Kalamazoo.